The Only Remedy
by Chibi Cheesecake
Summary: It starts out as something Cloud feels like he has to do, these detours to Kalm to bring flowers to a lonely woman. Somewhere along the way it turns into something they both want, a way to keep her memory alive.


**Notes:** Yes, I know that Geostigma is the "canon" post-game disease but…if you ask me there's no reason why Mako poisoning wouldn't be an issue as well. I've attempted to write this story a few times over the years, but it never came out like I wanted before and so I'm super excited to have finally finished it and to be releasing it into the wild. Enjoy! (Cross posted at AO3 under the handle BarenziahReborn.)

* * *

It hasn't even been a full year since the world ended and didn't end at the same time, and Cloud is still searching for a niche to fit in. He figures they all feel it to some degree. It's like going around wearing new clothes all the time, itchy and ill-fitting. Awkward, shuffling steps to a new normal. Reeve has, to Cloud's understanding, beaten the rest of them to that finish line. He's the closest one to it, at any rate. He is astoundingly busy with clean-up efforts, distributing aid, and just generally making the world livable again. So Cloud is surprised - and maybe a little apprehensive - to get a call one day from the former Shinra exec.

"I found her, and I thought you should know first," he tells Cloud, with little preamble.

"Found…who?"

"Elmyra Gainsborough."

Cloud doesn't answer, at first. "Oh," he says, finally, for lack of anything better to say. It's not quite a surprise, since he knew that Reeve was putting some of his not-inconsiderable resources to work to look for Aerith's mother, but Cloud is not sure what to do with this information. Frankly, he has tried not to think of what had happened to her since she disappeared from Kalm the night Meteor fell.

"She told me she was very sorry," Marlene had explained to Barret, disturbed to find her alone, "but that she had something important to do, and I should stay here and wait for you, Daddy."

" - One of those new facilities, the one in Kalm," Reeve is saying. "Do you know it?"

"I've heard of it, yeah." Reeve does not have to explain the sort of facility he is referring to. It's not just that Cloud is generally well-informed - there's probably not a man, woman, or child that doesn't know, that hasn't seen the hand-wringing on the nightly news about the dramatic spike in the number of cases of Mako poisoning. In the past Mako poisoning was mostly limited to incidents within SOLDIER, but then again, that much Lifestream has never been so close to the planet's surface before. The reaction over the outbreak of a disorder not well-understood was widespread panic. The reporters on TV play their role, whipping people into a frenzy. A people weary of loss swarming their doctor's offices, exclaiming that they kept forgetting where they had left their keys, was it Mako poisoning doing away with their minds? Everyday there were more questions and fewer answers - Shinra can do little except shrug, and release what scanty information they do have - as Mako poisoning was never a big priority for them. Every day there's some new gut-wrenching human interest story in the papers about families unsure how to care for comatose loved ones, papers that Tifa keeps throwing in the trash, muttering to herself.

"So she's sick?" Cloud asks very quietly.

"Yes. I don't know how bad. I've got it all settled with the doctors, the money part of it, anyway. But I won't be able to get out there anytime soon, Cloud," Reeve says pointedly.

"Understood." It comes out a little crisper than Cloud really intends.

"Just….take care of yourself, Cloud. And tell Tifa I said hello."

"Yeah. You too."

Dutifully he relays that part of the message to Tifa, at least, but he is cagey when she asks why Reeve even called in the first place. Tifa doesn't buy his non-answers, that much is obvious, but she doesn't push it, either. She doesn't so much, these days. Whether or not Cloud should go to Kalm to see Elmyra, apparently plagued with an ailment Cloud knows too well - whether he even wants to go, nags at him over the course of the next week, a splinter in his heart that won't wriggle free. That Reeve thinks he ought to go is not in question. That Aerith would want him to go is not in question, either, but Cloud is the last person on the planet her mother would ever want to see.

He does go, in the end, partly because Reeve is quietly expecting him to. And because she won't recognize him, anyway.

As it turns out, they've converted Kalm's inn, hastily. There are still old, faded paintings on the wall. The bar has been adapted into a kind of nurse's station, where a receptionist sits, her nose buried in a paperback as Cloud walks in. It's exactly the kind of pragmatism of the people living in the Midgar area, people used to making do with what they have instead of longing for what they can't afford.

"I'm here to see a patient," he tells the receptionist. "Elmyra Gainsborough."

"Are you a relative?"

"Uh, no, I'm a friend of her daughter - "

The receptionist frowns. "We generally don't allow visitors that are not family until we can notify the next of - "

"She died. I don't know of any other living relatives."

"Oh." Something in his face must be enough to stop the questions. The receptionist sighs and consults a clipboard on the desk in front of her. "Room six, down the hall, it will be on your left." The hall is quiet, disturbingly so, and Cloud suddenly realizes that is what is so unsettling about this place, in spite of the almost homey decor. The patients here are ghosts, tethered to the world by family and friends who hope for that one spark, a child's laugh or the face of a friend, the key to unlock a troubled mind. He passes one room with the door ajar; a figure lies in bed and a man in the room looks up as Cloud passes. Their eyes meet for a moment, and it's Cloud who turns away from the man's worn face first. The receptionist's apparent detachment makes a little more sense now. It can't be an easy job, working here.

Elmyra's room is as quiet as all the others. It's disturbing, to see someone else in that catatonic state that he knows so well. Sure enough, Elmyra doesn't speak, makes no acknowledgment that he is even in the room. Cloud is suddenly sure that this was a mistake, that he never should have come. Belatedly he remembers the flowers he brought. He still doesn't know why he did that. The church was on the way, he told himself. (Not really.) He lays them gently on the windowsill, slightly wilted from the journey and his clenched fist. Aerith would scold him for his rough treatment. There's a foam cup on a table in the room; he sets the flowers in that and replaces them on the windowsill. "Better," he mumbles to the empty air, then turns to go.

He tries to put it from his mind. He tries to tell himself that he's fulfilled his obligation in the days that follow. He believes it at first, but then he starts thinking of his own experience with Mako poisoning. Tifa never talks about it. Well, there are a lot of things that he and Tifa never talk about, but that is one of them. The space between Nibelheim and meeting Tifa in Midgar is a blur, a half-remembered nightmare, which is honestly probably for the best. That is a dark doorway he cannot bear to step through. On the other side of it lies a surety that Zack would still be alive if not for him, if Zack had just left him behind. But that wasn't the sort of person that Zack was, and Tifa isn't like that either. Neither of them gave up on him, and it's that thought that seals it for Cloud - he'll go back to Kalm.

The same receptionist is there, still keeping vigil at the converted bar, but it's been long enough that she doesn't recognize Cloud until he gives her his name. "Oh! You're the guy with the flowers," she says.

"Flowers?"

"Yeah! The doctors had never seen anything like it. Mrs. Gainsborough - she came out of it the day after you were here. Almost the first thing she asked the nurse was who left the flowers. We gave her your name, but we didn't have a number or address or anything. Anyway, I think she's resting now, but you can go right back and - " She trails off. "Everything okay?"

"I…don't think she would actually want to see me."

"Oh. I mean…she said she wanted to talk to you, if you ever showed up again." He's trapped. He never expected that this visit would culminate with him actually speaking to Aerith's only living family. Nor can he fathom what she wants to say to him, but he can't imagine any of it is very good. Cloud steels himself for the worst.

She is sitting in a wheelchair by the window when Cloud comes to hover awkwardly in the doorway. He remembers coming out of the fog, weak and loose-limbed, a mind re-acclimating to having a body. Elmyra turns and looks at him for a long moment, until Cloud flinches under her gaze, and then she turns to look out the window once more. "Did you bring flowers this time?"

"No."

Her shoulders sag a little. "Oh. Well, come in, anyway. Sit down. You had a bit of a drive to get here, right?"

He obeys, moving stiffly, and sinks down onto the edge of the worn leather armchair in the room. "You…remember me?"

"Of course I do," she scoffs. "More SOLDIER eyes, I remember thinking. More trouble."

It's Zack, Cloud realizes with a painful jolt, Elmyra is comparing him to Zack. He almost asks her what they were like, then, these two people that loved each other before they even knew him, but it's too vague of a question. It's not something Zack or Aerith themselves could answer, really, let alone Aerith's mother. The enormity of it all, of Aerith's death, seems to settle in the room like heavy dust cloths over the second-hand furniture. She would roll her eyes at the somber mood, at the idea that her memory could be so heavy and so stifling to two people that loved her so well. There had always been a lightness about her, an ability to brighten a place just by standing in it. Maybe that was the Ancient in her. Cloud had only known Aerith for a short time, all things considered, but he had marveled at the way she seemed to simply belong everywhere and anywhere, be it tending a patch of flowers, navigating the slums, dragging him through Gold Saucer, or exploring the temples of her ancestors. And it is that memory that keeps him there, at least for a little while longer.

"Although," Elmyra continues, "the nurses tell me that - that you saved me, with those flowers."

"I had no idea you'd wake up. I just thought it was a nice gesture."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

For a moment Cloud is back on the Highwind, heavy-limbed, lying on a bunk and working it out in his mind. What was he supposed to tell the others? The truth that he was barely qualified to be there, let alone be leading anyone? And how could he have ever forgotten Zack? "You're wondering if I really did you much of a favor."

"What? I - " Her dull eyes flash. "How dare you - you've barely spoken with me for fifteen minutes, you can't presume to know me just because you knew my daughter."

She's protesting too much and too vehemently, but Cloud considers that maybe he was wrong. Maybe some people come out of Mako poisoning eager to live. "I'm sorry," he says stiffly, for lack of anything better to say, getting to his feet and turning to leave.

"No - wait," she sighs. "I'm the one who's sorry. Maybe you're a little bit right. I thought I was home at first, you see. Aerith - she used to put flowers on every surface in every room in the house. We owned more vases than any reasonable person ever should." She laughs humorlessly. "The nurses also tell me I should expect some 'confusion'."

"It's not really…Well, you're not really confused, not like they're talking about. You know where you are now. But it felt so real there. That's the part they're missing." It ties knots in his stomach, the blank expression on Tifa's face when he tries to get her to remember something he could have sworn really happened. "It's your memories that are confusing. If they're real or not."

Elmyra is staring at him again. Something in her expression shifts; something in her appraisal of him has changed. "Have you had Mako poisoning before?"

"Twice."

"Twice," she repeats. That same humorless chuckle. "What keeps you coming back, I wonder? Do you even know?"

"It's because I made a promise. To live."

"To Aerith?"

"No. Before I met her."

"She would want me to make a promise like that."

"She'd want you to be happy," Cloud says, but it's an empty platitude, a thing easier said than done, and they both know it.

"I suppose I should give it a shot." She sighs and closes her eyes for a long moment.

"I'm sorry. I should let you rest." Maybe if he keeps apologizing for the little things, that will be good enough?

"Are you going to come back?" she asks as he turns to leave.

"I…yeah, I guess so. I owe you flowers again, don't I?"

"You do. Thank you for the flowers, Cloud."

They are coming up on a year since Meteorfall at a positively alarming rate, and Cloud is learning that some promises are easier kept than others. Bringing flowers to a lonely woman in Kalm - that one isn't too difficult. Cloud returns with flowers a week later, though it's gotten cold enough that they don't look their best, the petals a little droopy and the stems a little brownish. All the same, Elmyra studies them for a long quiet moment, breathing in their scent. "Too much pollen," she murmurs, wiping her eyes. She sets the small bouquet aside and turns to Cloud. "So it's still standing?"

"The church? Yeah, it's still there."

"Isn't it dangerous to go to Midgar? Too much Mako?"

Cloud merely shrugs. Perhaps there's no danger. Perhaps he's immune to it at this point. Regardless, it's a risk he'll continue to ignore. "That's what Shinra says, anyway."

"Oh, that reminds me!" Her eyes narrow in annoyance. "Your friend Reeve keeps trying to give me money."

Reeve has mentioned something about this, in between his quiet disapproval that Cloud has yet to mention Elmyra to any of their other friends. "No," Cloud says evenly, "that's not what he's doing."

"Oh, all right," she grumbles. "Just because I can hardly walk across this room without assistance, you don't get to treat me like I'm halfway senile." She says it lightly, without any real bite.

It shouldn't surprise him, these moments when he recognizes Aerith in the woman who raised her. "I - look, it's resettlement money for people who lived in Midgar. From Shinra, or what's left of it."

"For everyone who lived in Midgar? That's a lot."

"It's based on need. There's paperwork - an application. …Reeve did that part for you," he admits.

"I knew there was a catch. You can tell Reeve I have money - in the bank."

"The bank that doesn't exist anymore," Cloud counters.

"I guess you're right," Elmyra sighs. "You think I should take it?"

Cloud is taken aback that she is actually asking his advice. "Yeah? I mean, you weren't planning on staying here forever, were you?" He gestures at the room, clean and comfortable but small and a little shabby. She won't be sick forever for that matter, either.

"The nurses say I'm getting better," she says doubtfully.

"What will you do next?"

Even as Cloud says it, he realizes that it's something of a loaded question. They both know she has no family left, that she can't go home. Elmyra turns sharply and looks at him, as if really noticing him for the first time. "What's it to you, Cloud?" She doesn't pause long enough for him to answer, but Cloud doesn't have an answer for her, anyway. "So, Reeve thinks he can just throw money at me, you think you can just bring me flowers, and that makes it better?"

"I don't…I don't think that."

She looks a little shamefaced at his tone, and her eyes drift from Cloud's face back to the flowers on the windowsill. "Maybe you should go," she says softly.

"Yeah. Take care of yourself." It's a sincere wish, even as Cloud understands she wants nothing to do with him. He can't blame her. It's his fault that she's alone now, and they both know it. Whether Elmyra would feel the same way about the others, Cloud doesn't know, but for that reason he doesn't tell Tifa about it in the days that follow. No, in fact, Cloud does his best to put Elmyra Gainsborough entirely from his mind.

It works, up to a point. Tifa keeps cheerfully pushing him out the door to make deliveries - "If you can't sit still, might as well make something useful out of it," she had said. It isn't so much that he can't keep still as it is that he can't play the game she does. He can't fake domesticity, but he doesn't want to ruin it for her, either, so he goes. And then, one particularly cold morning, the realization comes on so suddenly it knocks the wind out of him. Aerith died a whole year ago. A year, and he feels like has nothing to show for it. Tifa tries, she tries hard enough for the both of them. Maybe he should try a little harder. Aerith would want him to try harder. Like it or not, this is the world she died to save, and she didn't save it so he could drift through it like a ghost. And she would want him to check up on her mother.

It's a flashback to the last time he made the trip - he waits till he has a delivery in the area, the same receptionist lights up in recognition when he gives his name.

"The flower guy, yeah," Cloud says, before the receptionist can say it for him. No flowers this time, though. They've all shriveled up in the cold. He's sure they'll be back in the spring, more sure than mere logic would allow.

"Mrs. Gainsborough isn't here anymore. She was discharged, oh, a month ago? Made the doctors and a lot of patients' families really excited."

He could say that he's done what he could. He could turn around and go home. He stands there a moment longer, and the receptionist, perhaps picking up on his internal battle, offers, "I can give you her new address?"

She took the money after all, Cloud learns, and started renting a newly vacant house in Kalm. Kalm was always a popular town, close to Midgar but far enough that the air didn't choke your lungs. It's as good a place to make a fresh start as any, Cloud supposes. The house is like most of the houses in town - compact, tidy, the roof maybe sagging a bit, a few chips in the paint here and there, but otherwise well-kept. Before he can talk himself out of it, Cloud knocks on the door. Elmyra opens it a moment later, and if she is surprised to see him, it doesn't register on her face. Even when Cloud first met her she already had a careworn look, but the effect is not so pronounced this time. A fresh start, indeed. Perhaps that's why she doesn't chase him away, just appraises him for another moment before opening the door wider. "I had a feeling you might come back," she says slowly. "I - you might as well come in. You look like you had as bad of a week as I did."

"I just thought, maybe - I should - " Cloud stammers, even as he follows her into the house.

"I know," she says, shutting the door behind him. "It…that was nice of you. Especially because I was a little harsh last time."

The last thing Cloud expected was something approaching an apology. "You had every reason to be."

"Well…I don't know, maybe." She sighs. "Being out of that place has helped, I'll tell you that much."

"They said you'd been here a month?"

She nods. "Something like that. It isn't much, but it's…" She trails off, but Cloud thinks he understands. A place of her own, but unburdened by memories. Their old house in Midgar still stands; Cloud has driven past it a few times, though he hasn't gone in. It is not like the church. Somehow, it isn't a place where he belongs.

The house is certainly small, but it is warm and warmly furnished. "I picked this one for the garden," she says suddenly. Cloud had noticed when he first approached the house, a small, fenced-in side yard with a fine little plot of dirt. "That's what old people are supposed to do, isn't it? Garden?" Elmyra adds.

Cloud nods. "They'll probably grow nicely out here." Elmyra says one thing but means another, testing the waters first, hides meaning in benign statements. Aerith did the same, all the time, and Cloud only wishes he had been a better interpreter when she was alive.

Elmyra sighs. "Well, I - I'd be lying if I said the thought hadn't crossed my mind."

"I'll bring some, when it's warmer."

She studies him for a long moment. "You must have grown up a lot, saving the world. You clearly thought of yourself as a big shot that day Aerith brought you home."

"Grown up? No, I just stopped pretending."

"Mm. They're kind of the same thing, though. Do you want some tea? I'd just put the kettle on when you got here," she says suddenly.

He is about to protest that he ought to be going. Maybe Tifa won't ask where he's been. Sometimes she doesn't. But maybe she will. And he isn't ready to explain where he was - or, more importantly, why he feels like he must keep it secret. "I - sure."

Elmyra is digging around in the cupboards, and Cloud sits awkwardly at the kitchen table. "I don't know what it is about SOLDIERs," Elmyra is saying to the glassware. "Sorry to break it to you, Cloud, but you weren't the first one Aerith brought home."

"I know."

She crosses the room with two steaming mugs of tea and sets one in front of Cloud. "Did she tell you about Zack?" Elmyra asks, frowning.

Cloud drops a sugar cube into his tea, watching it dissolve. Aerith told him about Zack in fits and starts, in half truths, giving him one puzzle piece at a time but always holding the last one tight. "Yes, and no."

Elmyra doesn't question his non-answer. "You always think your children are going to be happier than you," she says quietly to her own mug. "You think that if you do everything right, they won't have to face the same hardships you did. It changes you, waiting that long for someone you love. It changed me, and it changed Aerith, too."

"I knew Zack. He was a good friend."

"Was?"

"He died."

"Oh." She wraps her hands around her mug, although the little kitchen is plenty warm. "I thought as much. I am sorry to hear it, though. Not just for her sake, or yours. I was suspicious of Zack at first, you know, on principle, but he was a good man."

It's surreal to hear her talk about Zack with such familiarity; Zack, who now only exists in a very few people's memories besides Cloud's. It occurs to him, suddenly, that Elmyra has never had anyone to speak with about these things. They must have been private people, for Aerith's safety; he'd always had the impression that she didn't get out much, anyway. And it occurs to him that, unlike him, Elmyra actually wants to talk about this stuff. Even if her only available audience is Cloud. Even if it's his fault that Aerith is gone. Elmyra may not have fully meant what she said the last time, but she is right - flowers can't make up for what he's done - or what he's failed to do, more accurately. But if she wants someone to listen, he can do that much, at least.

So that's how it starts, with Cloud making a few trips out to Kalm to bring flowers to a lonely woman. And somewhere as time stretches along, from one year, to a year and a few months, to a year and a half - somewhere along the line it becomes something they both want to do, a way to keep her memory alive. Still, though, he hasn't told the others that he speaks with Aerith's mother on something of a regular basis. It's a selfish secret, one kept entirely for his own benefit. Because time, being what it is, takes her a little further away every day. But Cloud is reluctant to talk about himself, nor does Elmyra hardly ever ask him except in the most general way. It's almost an unspoken truth between the two of them - they are doing this for Aerith, and for no other reason.

"I think your neighbors are starting to wonder about me," Cloud tells Elmyra one warm day. He's not exactly inconspicuous, after all, armed and riding around on the quiet town on a custom motorcycle.

She shrugs. "Old people have nothing better to do than gossip about their neighbors. I count myself among them, by the way. They've always been kind and welcoming to me, anyway."

"Good." It sounds nothing like Edge, populated by grim faces staring down at the sidewalk, heads bent against some invisible force.

"They don't pry into my affairs," Elmyra continues. "Especially the landlady, thankfully. She's forgetful, though. I've asked her at least three times to send someone to fix that window." She nods at the window over the kitchen table.

It looks whole enough to Cloud. "What's wrong with it?"

"I can't get it open. Oh, all right, don't look at me like that. It's really stuck tight."

The little house does seem a little overly warm. "Do you…want me to try and fix it?"

"Well…" Elmyra crosses her arms then unfolds them again, looking between Cloud and the window. "If you don't mind giving it a try."

Cloud nods and steps forward to get a better look at it. "Tifa's a lot better at this kind of thing than I am," he says, apologetically. There's no project that she won't roll up her sleeves and try anyway. She's changed, in the last year and a half; now there is no problem she won't simply barrel straight toward. "Got a knife?" he asks.

Elmyra hands him one, then steps back to watch. "How is she?" she asks carefully. "Barret, too. And your other friends."

"They're…fine."

"That wasn't very convincing."

"We don't - I don't talk to them every day." It is an intentionally vague answer. He focuses on loosening the decades of dried, peeling paint.

"Didn't you say you live with Tifa? And Marlene?"

"Well, yeah, I see them, but…" Cloud shrugs, as if he can deflect her sudden interest in his life. He has no idea where it's coming from. "I'm on the road a lot."

"What about your family?"

"I don't have any."

"Really? No siblings, parents?"

"Nope. I don't remember my father. My mom died when I was sixteen."

"I'm sorry."

He shrugs. "It's okay." It's not, not really, but he just doesn't want to be the topic of conversation anymore. Elmyra says nothing, and Cloud pauses in his task to look back at her. She's giving him that look that she gives him sometimes, that one where it's almost like she's never seen him before. "What?"

"Mm? Oh, nothing, I - I guess I just never considered that you might be as lonely as I am."

Finally, the jammed window slides free with a crack. Cloud slides it up as high as it will go, and is rewarded with a cool breeze against his face. "Better?" he asks, turning back to Elmyra.

"Much better. Thanks."

Cloud has never considered himself lonely, either, but then again, this is all he's ever really known. Maybe it is lonelines?. Making friends has never come easily to him. When he was young he blamed Nibelheim, blamed the smallness of it, the close-mindedness of the people; sometimes he even blamed his mother for being too attentive, too stifling. Midgar would be different, he had told himself. SOLDIER would be different. And maybe it was. There was Zack, after all, who liked him even being the nobody that he was. He tells Elmyra some of that, haltingly, that afternoon, the summer breeze breathing new life into the place. After that day it's like the flood gates have opened up; he began to tell her more about his past, about his life in Edge, even stories about Aerith, and himself, and the others and what they all fought for. Carefully curated stories, of course.

And it's not like confiding in Tifa, or the others. Elmyra doesn't like him, after all. Nothing to lose.

Still, when he gets sick, he keeps it from her just as he keeps it from everyone. There was no mistaking the mark on his arm, just like Denzel's, but even before it manifested he knew he was sick. Tifa suspects nothing, at least Cloud is pretty sure that she doesn't. It's easier to hide since he's never home, and she's come to expect him being away for these long stretches. Cloud is no stranger to death, the way it can sneak up on you. Still, he thought dying would be more of an…event. Perhaps it's jumping the gun a little to say he is dying already. Aside from the spasms of pain and occasional blackouts (though they are growing more frequent at a disconcerting pace) nothing about his daily life has changed.

It's a sunny day when he goes to Kalm for what he thinks will be the last time. He doesn't intend to tell Elmyra that, of course. In the back of his mind Cloud knows this is a terrible truth to keep to himself. He tells himself that it's…well, 'fine' isn't the right word, but he's cheated death enough times for someone his age. That's what he tells himself, but the truth is he knows that his friends would convince him to fight it if they knew. Geostigma is everywhere now, even in Kalm, and there are fewer neighbors watching his approach than ever before. The house two doors down from Elmyra's has a 'for sale' sign in front of it that Cloud is sure was not there before. They don't talk about it, though. They talk about her garden instead, which, as they had both hoped, burst encouragingly into little green buds in the spring and summer.

"What's with that look?" Elmyra asks. Cloud was thinking that he won't get to see them bloom, but before he can contrive an excuse, another spasm of pain seizes him, worse than before.

"I'm fine," he says, in response to Elmyra's alarm - or at least, he thinks he says it; there is a terrible ringing in his ears and the world swims in and out of focus.

The next thing he knows, he's laying on the floor. Someone's resting a steadying hand on his shoulder. For a moment, Cloud cannot fathom where he is or how he came to be on the floor, or, more importantly, why he feels so awful. "Mom?" he mumbles.

"Not quite." Elmyra's ashen face slowly swims into view. Cloud sits up, very slowly. There are fresh bandages wound around his arm. So much for this secret. "Sorry about the floor," she says. "The couch is more comfortable, but you're awfully heavy." He tries to get up, but even that is more than he can manage at the moment, and Elmyra puts a steadying hand on his shoulder. "Would you sit still?" she admonishes.

"Sorry," he says, though he isn't particularly sure what he's apologizing for.

"You're sick," Elmyra says at length. "You're…dying?"

He can't say that he's been doing much living either, though. "I guess so."

"And I'm the only one who knows, aren't I?"

Cloud's silence is answer enough.

"What about your friends? What about Tifa?"

"She'll be fine. She's always been stronger than me. It's just me. But it's Denzel, too." Cloud isn't sure if he's making any sense at all.

"The little boy from the church? He's sick too?"

"I thought maybe I could actually do something this time. I thought maybe I wouldn't be too late this time. Why did I ever think this would be any different? I _never_ \- " He lets out a shaky breath and scrubs a hand over his face.

Elmyra slides her arm across his shoulders in a one-armed embrace. "I…I just don't know what to say. I'm sorry."

"Me too."

It's getting late by the time he's finally back on his feet. "Are you sure you're okay to drive?" Elmyra asks, even as Cloud is reaching for the door.

"Yeah, it's fine." He pauses, his hand on the doorknob. He turns to face her. He's got to say it properly this time. It's the last chance he's going to get. "I just…I wanted to say I'm sorry. I think about Aerith all the time, and how I let her down. I let you down, too. And…I wanted to say thanks, for all the tea, I guess."

"You're welcome," she says, her voice hardly louder than a whisper. "And thank you for all the flowers." Her eyes fill with tears, much to Cloud's surprise. "Take care of yourself, Cloud. Aerith would want you to. I want you to."

"Yeah. You take care too, Elmyra."

He lets it linger in the back of his mind, the thought of dying, a shadow just in the corner of his vision. It gets a little larger, a little harder to ignore every day, but other than that, the days pass as they always have, long and empty. So that's why it feels so unfathomably strange, to be suddenly fending off an attack from three unknown assailants. Three silver-haired men that Cloud knows he's never seen before, even if they feel uncomfortably familiar, like remnants of a half-remembered nightmare.

That turns out to not be far from the truth.

He thinks, at first, that he imagined the whole thing, a hallucination conjured by his feverish mind. But Tifa's worried voicemails keep coming. And when Rufus Shinra wheels himself out and conscripts Cloud into another fight, well, he's forced to admit that stranger things have happened to him. The only part of those few days that isn't strange, somehow, is Aerith and Zack. Talking to him. It should feel stranger, but it doesn't. Maybe that's the part he's hallucinating, maybe that's the part of all this that isn't real. Maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe it doesn't have to be real to be important.

But late that night, back at the bar, once they've all quieted down - not so much drunk on alcohol as drunk on still being alive somehow - Denzel falls asleep curled against Cloud's side, and that part is very, very real and very important. There's a little color back in his face. He was so pale and small the last time Cloud saw him. He shifts a little, and Denzel only presses closer in his sleep. "Guess I'm not going anywhere," Cloud says quietly.

Tifa only smiles at him. "Guess not," she whispers. And, for once, there's nowhere he'd rather be.

No, he didn't expect to get the chance to return to Elmyra's house in Kalm again, but things not happening as he planned seems to be the recurring theme in Cloud's life. She's out in the garden when he pulls up ( "I still can't believe you named your motorcycle, you dork," was Yuffie's admonishment, goading Cid into a long discussion on how big a vehicle had to be before you could name it), and at the sight of him, she straightens and wipes her hands on her apron. "Um, hi - " Cloud begins, but before he can provide any sort of explanation, Elmyra has thrown her arms around him. She releases him just as abruptly, looking him up and down.

She looks a little surprised at herself. "I, well - I was starting to really think you were dead." She clears her throat. "We've been hearing awful things out of Edge."

"I - sorry. I guess I should have called." In truth he wouldn't have thought his fate mattered that much to her, but it is gratifying, if not a little surprising, to be proven wrong. "But I felt like I needed to stick close to home for a while." It was in those furtive glances that Tifa kept giving him in those first days after he was home (and alive) that he remembered Elmyra's words, that waiting changed a person. Cloud won't flatter himself into thinking he means that much to Tifa, but still, he figured he'd done enough running out on her for a while. He glances at the garden, the damp dark earth dotted with green sprouts, each one topped with a delicate bud. "Your garden looks nice."

"Doesn't it, though? I can't wait for them to bloom. We did have that good rain a few weeks back."

Cloud turns back and looks at her, a knowing smile playing on her face. He can't quite think of how to voice the question he wants to ask. "I wondered if you - "

"Of course I did," she scoffs. "I'm her mother. D'you want to come in? I need a break anyway." There is lemonade and pound cake waiting in the kitchen - the cake, Elmyra mentions, is a gift from the kindly gentleman next door.

"What, like - an admirer?"

"Ha! I doubt it. How are your friends?" she asks, busying herself with the plates and the cutlery.

"They're…good. We're all fine." He pauses. "They don't know I'm here."

"I know. It was obvious." Elmyra joins him at the table. "What I don't know, is why."

Cloud doesn't answer right away, watching a bead of condensation trickle down his glass. "It was the way you looked at me at first. It was how I looked at myself, too. But, I guess I just…didn't want to see my friends look at me the same way."

Elmyra sighs. "I thought a lot about what you said the last time you were here. I don't think you let Aerith down. I'm sorry that you do. I thought that at first, because I wanted to be angry instead of sad. I kept thinking, if you hadn't shown up, everything would have been fine. But Aerith always knew she wasn't going to live an ordinary life, and I think I knew it too, I just pretended not to. I'll always miss her, but I'm glad she had friends that loved her so well. A lot of people can't say that."

"I saw her. I talked to her." It comes out in barely more than a whisper. "She…said it wasn't my fault."

"Of course she did! And I talk to her all the time. Mostly when I'm asleep. While I was away, too, with the Mako sickness. The nurses kept telling me it was all in my head, but then I started to realize that didn't matter. That didn't mean it wasn't real." She reaches over and puts her hand over his. "It's as real as you want it to be." It's funny, how that works, how they both came to the same conclusion.

"I think - " Cloud begins, and then he pauses until he can say it without his voice shaking. "I think my friends would want to talk to you. Even the ones you haven't met yet."

"I think I'd like that."

"Marlene asks about you sometimes."

"Does she? What a sweet girl. I still feel terrible that I left her. I thought maybe I'd be able to see Aerith. I guess I did in the end, but it still wasn't a very smart thing to do."

He's long since guessed at the reason why Elmyra left the relative safety of Kalm that night. "It's okay. Marlene's fine. I could bring her next time."

"Please do. And her father, and Tifa."

He promises to do so, but on the drive home he realizes that means he must tell them first. Tifa takes it very well, in fact. Cloud waits until a quiet, rainy afternoon, and he finds her in the basement doing laundry. Once he has built up a nice stack of folded towels, he takes a deep breath, and prefaces it with, "I need to tell you something, and you're going to be mad that I took this long to tell you."

Barret takes it less well, but he doesn't really get a chance to properly bawl Cloud out before Marlene's whole face lights up. "Can we go see her tomorrow?" she asks.

"Wait, whose mother are we going to see?" Denzel asks.

Barret fixes Cloud with a sour expression. "You best not be keeping any other secrets."

"Nope, that was it." Cloud is used to Barret's brief tempers by now. Besides, it isn't as though he doesn't understand where Barret is coming from - it was Elmyra that kept Marlene safe before, after all. But if he is genuinely upset with Cloud it dissipates quickly in the face of Marlene's excitement at the prospect of seeing her old friend again.

That weekend the five of them pile into Tifa's truck, and well after they are on the road, with her hands tight on the steering wheel, she glances over at Cloud. "Are you sure Elmyra wants to see us?"

"Yeah. She said she did."

"Why wouldn't she?" Marlene pipes up from the back, but no one answers her. What she even remembers of Aerith at this point, Cloud isn't sure. Marlene knows who she was, certainly, and that she died helping them stop Sephiroth, but Barret has gone to great lengths to keep the details from her.

"I'll tell her everything when she's older," he'd said once. "About her father, Shinra, Aerith, Meteor…but not now. Kids ain't supposed to grow up with that kinda garbage."

Denzel is quiet in the backseat, but Cloud can't blame him. Their past is not his past, and even now he only knows snatches of it. Cloud ought to fix that, one of these days. If Denzel wants to know. And, perhaps more importantly, if there's anything he wants to share in return. Barret was probably right, that children weren't meant to have to deal with some things - but that didn't mean it never happened anyway.

He's made this drive a number of times before, but never with so much company, and it goes by faster than usual. Elmyra steps out of the house as they all clamber out of the truck. "Mrs. Elmyra!" Marlene shouts, running to her and throwing her arms around her waist. Cloud remembers when Marlene was so shy she could barely say hello to him. He remembers offering her a flower, the loveliness of the thing outweighing her shyness. And he remembers Tifa's look of surprise, both at seeing such a thing in a bar in the slums of Midgar and at such a gesture coming from _Cloud_.

"Hello, Marlene!" Elmyra is saying, bending to get a better look at her. "You've gotten a lot bigger since I saw you last. Why…and I love what you've done with your hair."

Marlene frowns, touching the end of her braid, suddenly self-conscious. "Would Aerith mind? That I copied her?"

"Oh, no, not at all. She'd be very flattered."

"Cloud said you were sick before, but you're better now, right? I was worried about you, Mrs. Elmyra!" she scolds.

"Yes, I'm all right now. And I owe you an apology, Marlene. For leaving."

"Oh." Marlene shrugs. "That's okay. I was a little scared by myself, but I knew Daddy would come get me. Right, Daddy?" she says, as Barret approaches the two of them. "Daddy, why are you crying?"

Barret scoops Marlene into his arms. "You remember when Aerith and her mama saved you, don't you, Marlene?" he says thickly, and then he pulls Elmyra into a hug, too.

"It was a dumb secret to keep," Cloud says, watching them, partly to himself and partly to Tifa.

"Probably," she says, and he pretends not to notice when she reaches up to wipe her eyes. "But it's okay. I think I know why you did it. And…honestly, I'm relieved that there were some days you were here and not…I don't know, betting all day on chocobo races or something."

"That was what I did on Tuesdays."

"That's cute, Cloud, real cute," Tifa tosses over her shoulder, as she moves to join the others.

Denzel is still hanging back, by the truck. "What was she like?" he asks suddenly. "Your friend Aerith."

"Well," he begins, "she grew flowers." He knows he won't see her if he turns around, but he thinks she could be there just the same, near people that loved her so well.


End file.
